


Down Time

by Measured_Words



Category: The Murderbot Diaries - Martha Wells
Genre: Canon-Typical Dystopia, Gen, Introspection, Surveillance State
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-18
Updated: 2018-12-18
Packaged: 2019-09-21 19:07:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,541
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17048912
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Measured_Words/pseuds/Measured_Words
Summary: Murderbot watches media with Dr. Mensah's Daughter and tried not to think about its situation.  It doesn't work.





	Down Time

**Author's Note:**

  * For [shrift](https://archiveofourown.org/users/shrift/gifts).



I'd noticed straight away that PreservationAux was really very different from the Corporate Rim – even when I was putting my mind back together, that had been clear. The station was different. The media was different. I should have known from Dr. Mensah and the others but it took me a long time to actually understand what that meant. It wasn't Corporate. People did things for reasons that had nothing to do with money. Nothing. People who lived there – who lived here - don't even use it.

I felt like I was still trying to put my mind back together.

The place ran counter to my programming. It ran counter to my expectations. I kind of hated it.

I'd been staying in the hotel suite that Pin-Lee had arranged, where the cameras were set up in the other rooms so I could see. I remembered how disconcerting it was when I arrived and there weren't cameras everywhere, but it wasn't just the hotel. There weren't systems constantly monitoring everything the humans here did. Which means that I couldn't monitor them either, unless I did so directly. And I think I'd made it clear by now that I really hated that.

But Dr. Mensah was here, and she was still my favourite human. There were other humans that I liked here too – Ratthi, Arada, Overse, Pin-Lee. I still didn't like Gurathin, but was used to him. And he had helped me with the others. There were new humans too. Dr. Mensah had been cautious introducing me to her partners, and their other children. I thought she didn’t want me to get overwhelmed (more overwhelmed). They didn’t know what to make of me, either, mostly, and it was kind of awkward.

I liked Varyi. She was the juvenile I talked to first, who snuck in when her parent wasn't looking. She'd done that a few more times, and she was doing it now. I was trying to watch a new historical drama, and I told her so, though I shouldn't have had to. It was covering the display surface wall.

"That's not new," she said. "I had to watch that in school."

She should have known better than to challenge my media knowledge. "No. I watched that one too. This is a new version."

"Yeah, but it's the same story though, isn't it?"

"I don't know," I said, "someone interrupted me when I was trying to watch it."

"She's cute…" Varyi sat in one of the other chairs, taking in the scene in progress. "Is that, uh… The one who tries to make friends with the corporate soldier?"

"Maybe. I don't know if this version is keeping the love story." It was about the first contact between Preservation Alliance and the Corporation Rim. I was watching it because I liked historical dramas, sure, but it wasn't just that. There was no love story in the historical account. I'd read that too, and looked at the surviving datafiles. All the media was full of lies, but they were useful lies if you knew they were there.

"That was the best part," Varyi said.

"They're playing up the espionage angle instead." The histories I'd looked at were full of speculation about the actual number of factions involved in the meetings and negotiations from the corporate side. Much like there were rumours flying across the media streams currently about the ongoing investigations into GreyCris. They'd all picked up on the story tying some of the parent company's upper management to a certain weapon patent company. That was interesting. Having to face the fact that there were actual real humans behind all of these companies, or at least profiting from what the bot networks are coming up with, was interesting in a different way. Not a good way. I'd been trying not to think about it.

"Oooooh…" Varyi leaned back in the chair, watching the surface intently, so I resumed the stream.

It was pretty compelling stuff. They did keep some romance, but they didn't cross any borders with it. Instead, they crossed factions on the corporate side, and they got some good drama out of that. In this version, the competing politicians on the corporate side managed to shoot themselves in the foot by exposing each other's shady dealings at critical moments in the negotiations. The Preservation Speakers were more passive and reactionary than I'd imagined they really were, though the results were the same.

"Is the Corporation Rim really like that?"

Of course she had to ask. She'd never been outside the freehold. Never been on a world that ran on currency, with cameras everywhere, where everything you said and did could and likely would be sold to the highest bidder, regardless of how much privacy you thought you had.

"Yes," I said, but apparently she wanted me to elaborate. Which, okay, I could do. "Look at everything that's happened with GreyCris." I didn't actually know what all she knew, but she seemed pretty curious and had access to all the same streams as everyone else, so I figured she had a reasonable idea. It was a lot to keep up with, and I vacillated between feeling like I'd done my part in protecting Dr. Mensah and bringing things to light and was now well out of it, and worrying that they would still weasel out of it somehow, or drag Mensah back into it. Or worse, that I'll have to deal with it directly myself. I felt like I was under enough scrutiny as it was, and they still didn't have a clear idea of what I even looked like.

"Is it like that all the time? I mean, it seems like this is a really big deal."

That was harder to answer. I'd certainly had been on other jobs that had gone south because of corporate espionage, so it did happen more frequently than the news feeds let on. "When I was working your mother's contract, it took me a while to be sure that what was happening was because of deliberate sabotage and not just because the company was cheap and provided shoddy resources. Really, it was one enabling the other." I should probably be glad – it they kept better care of their equipment, I'd have never managed to hack myself without getting caught.

"Is it legal for them to provide bad, um, resources?"

Like sending a Murderbot instead of a properly functioning SecUnit? I didn't say it, though. "The company cuts a lot of corners – little things they can afford to get caught on, but no one big thing that will take them down."

She took a minute to think that over, which left me with some time to think about it too. "So it's just all greed, then?"

"Yes." That's what it all came down to, in the end. 

"My mom says that we try to make sure people have everything that they need, and that there's no real benefit to stockpiling, so we'll have less crime. That why we trade for real things, not imaginary currency."

I wasn’t looking at her, because I shouldn't have to pretend to be human with people who knew better - I didn't have to do human things, like make awkward eye contact. But I knew she was looking at me, waiting for an answer, because they all still did it. Mostly. Dr. Mensah tried really hard, but her child didn't have as much experience being a human yet and relied on a lot of default behaviours. Anyway, I didn't know what she wanted me to say.

"The Rim sounds kind of creepy, that’s all," she said once she'd figured out that I didn't have a response.

"SecUnits aren't programmed to find things creepy." I'd meant it to be sarcastic so that she would leave me alone, but it didn't work. Instead she furrowed her brow.

"Maybe that's why," she said. "They probably don't want you thinking about it."

"Don't you have somewhere else to be?" 

I was probably doing something weird with my face, because her eyes went all wide and she almost leapt out of her chair.

"Sorry, I'll go."

I didn't want to think about this, but there it was. The company never wanted us to think about anything other than our jobs. That's what the governor module was for. And the memory wipes. They even did a shoddy job at those. Greedy humans. They'd started everything back on RaviHyral… or even before then. People had died. It wasn't uncommon. 

I'd been part of that. And now I wasn't. I'd hacked myself as protection, and then I'd left. But I'd spent how long now orbiting this planet where things could be different… I would have a guardian, and I didn't like that, sure, but if I was being honest it wasn't just that. I didn't belong there. I was a Murderbot.

I didn't like any of this, and thinking about it (which as noted, I didn't want to do) wasn't even helping. I knew it wasn't over, whatever it was, if it ever would be. But no one was making me do anything, either. I had choices, and for the moment, I was choosing to queue up the entire second season of Sanctuary Moon.


End file.
